Stephen Hill (AP)
Remember the No-Name Defense? The Jets are trying No-Name Receivers.
With their four top wide receivers injured, the Jets offense looked brutal in practice yesterday. Church picnics have more weapons than the Jets do right now.
Quarterback Mark Sanchez sometimes looks around the huddle and wonders who these guys are.
“We’ve come up with some funny nicknames for some of them because you don’t even know their names and they’re just in there,” Sanchez said.
Santonio Holmes (foot), Stephen Hill (knee), Jeremy Kerley (heel) and Clyde Gates (hamstring) are all sitting out some or all of the team’s OTAs. That leaves an inexperienced group to catch the passes of Sanchez and Geno Smith in the great quarterback competition.
The Jets have been snakebitten at wide receiver for the last calendar year. A rash of hamstring injuries hurt the group last spring and into training camp. Then Holmes injured his ribs in camp and suffered a season-ending foot injury in Week 4. Hill spent his rookie year in and out of the lineup with injuries until a knee injury ended his season with three games left.
“Looking back on the whole season, we didn’t have a healthy receiver from the beginning of the offseason to the very last game we played,” Sanchez said. “We never had everybody out on the field that was, on paper, a starter.”
Wide receivers coach Sanjay Lal was hired last year and has had one of the toughest coaching jobs in the building. Last season, he was asked to coach guys signed on Tuesday in games on Sunday. Now he has a group of no names with barely any experience.
“It’s hard in the sense that these reps are invaluable right now, especially with a developing group,” Lal said. “They’ll never get these reps back. It’s very hard in the sense that you could have been coaching these guys to a different level and you never got the opportunity. But the only way to look at it is you’re building some other guy up that maybe wouldn’t have had the quality reps that they’re getting now.
“You just channel your energy into who’s there. Otherwise, you’ll drive yourself crazy thinking, ‘what if?’ ’’
Jets coach Rex Ryan said he expects Hill, Kerley and Gates to be ready for next week’s minicamp. He said Holmes could begin training camp on the Physically Unable to Perform (PUP) list, meaning it could be deep into camp before the Jets see their starting receivers on the field together.
“That’s brutal,” Ryan said of the receiver situation. “If we had to play [this week], obviously there would be major concerns.”
Without the top four receivers, the Jets have only one experienced receiver on the roster. Ben Obomanu, signed last week, has played 66 games in the NFL. Other than Obomanu, only Jordan White (two games) has seen time. At one point yesterday, Joseph Collins, Zach Rogers and Thomas Mayo — with zero games’ experience among them — were the team’s first-team receivers.
The biggest concern at the position has to be Hill, the 22-year-old entering his second season. Both Ryan and Lal said Hill was showing great strides this offseason before his surgically repaired knee swelled in early-May and the trainers sat him down.
“It’s not frustrating,” Hill said. “Just as a competitor you want to get out there and compete.”
Lal said Hill had his worst game last year against the Rams [zero catches]. Hill was limited in practice that week because of an illness.
“Right there we learned that Stephen needs reps at this stage of his career,” Lal said.
For Lal, he is entering his second season with the same problems that plagued his first. He can only hope at some point he has more receivers on the field than in the trainer’s room.
“I would love for the time when we just have our guys and we can build a group,” Lal said.
brian.costello@nypost.com